FBI News Clipping Files:
American Israel Public Affairs Committee
2005 Espionage Case

Documents

The Israel Lobby Archive obtained 405 pages from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. The released documents are news clippings maintained by the FBI during its espionage investigation of Department of Defense Colonel Lawrence Franklin and AIPAC staffers Keith Weissman and Steven J. Rosen.

The broad range of content clipped by the FBI ranges from Antiwar.com "Chalabi-gate: None Dare Call It Treason" by Justin Raimondo (05/28/2004) to The Nation "Still Dreaming of Tehran" by Robert Dreyfuss and Laura Rosen (04/12/2004).

Among the earlier files clipped by the FBI are the  NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript of a program called "Back to Iraq?" which aired on PBS on May 4, 1998. The broadcast includes content from R. James Woolsey and Zalmay Khalizad.  Also in the file is the Washington Post "Meetings with Iran-Contra Arms Dealer Confirmed" by Bradley Graham and Peter Slevin dated August 9, 2003. The most recent content is from the Politico "Leniency for AIPAC Leaker" by Josh Gerstein on 06/12/2009.

There is little original FBI content in the clippings. On page 337 the FBI boxed a paragraph from reporter Laura Rozen's article "The Big Chill" in The Nation on July 14, 2005.

"The Nation has learned that among the documents the FBI has in its possession is a memo written by Rosen in 1983, soon after he joined AIPAC, to his then-boss describing his having been informed about the contents of a classified draft of a White House position paper concerning the Middle East and telling his boss that their inside knowledge of this draft might enable the group to influence the final document. The significance would seem to be an effort by the FBI to establish a pattern of Rosen's accessing classified information to which he was not authorized, not just from Franklin but over many years. Rosen's attorneys declined to comment on the allegation." (NOTE: By 1984 the US Trade Representative called in the FBI to investigate Rosen's AIPAC research team over theft of classified US trade data  ARCHIVE)

On August 12, 2005 Tracey J. Bridges of the FBI Washington Field Office emailed an article by Ron Kampeas and Matthew E. Berger titled "Two Ex-AIPAC Staffers Indicted". The email subject line was "WOO HOO for you guys..."

On October 7, 2005 Peter Strozok emailed another Kampeas article to colleagues noting, "Did you see the JTA [Jewish Telegraphic Agency]? Need to start calling Reilly 'That's Classified' instead!" The passage that triggered the FBI remark was an account of courtroom drama during which Col Lawrence Franklin began to disclose classified NDI he had passed to AIPAC.

"'It was a list of murders' Franklin began to explain to U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis when Thomas Reilly, a youthful, red-haired lawyer from the Justice Department, leapt from his seat, shouting 'Your Honor, that's classified!'"

The FBI clipping file also includes a 10/20/2006 Time Magazine article detailing a federal investigation into whether representative Jane Harman, in exchange for help from AIPAC to obtain leadership of the House Intelligence Panel, agreed to intervene with the Bush administration to go easy on Weissman and Rosen.

Another March 17, 2009 FBI email forwarded a Washington Times article about how Uzi Arad was barred for two years from entering the US on the grounds that he was an intelligence risk.

The last file in the FBI clippings is a Politico.com article titled "Leniency for AIPAC Leaker" written by Josh Gerstein on June 11, 2009. The article details how, after charges were dropped against Rosen and Weissman, the Judge reduced Lawrence Franklin's sentence to 10 months in "community confinement." Prosecutors sought reduction to 8 years, while counsel for Franklin sought "no charges at all."

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is presented without profit for research and educational purposes, most importantly understanding how government functions during law enforcement actions involving Israel and its lobbyists. The Israel Lobby Archive has no affiliation whatsoever with the originators of the articles clipped by the FBI nor is it endorsed or sponsored by the originator.